NewsTrain’s first stop of the year is in Springfield, Ill., April 29-30, for a workshop on watchdog journalism, government coverage, social media skills, working with data, covering diverse communities, and more.

NewsTrain is sponsored by APME and this workshop is hosted by the State Journal-Register; Rockford Register Star, Peoria Journal Star; Quad City Times (Iowa); Illinois Press Association; the Associated Press and the AP editors board in Illinois. Other members of the planning committee include the AP editors boards in Indiana and Wisconsin; Belleville (Ill.) News Democrat, St. Louis Post Dispatch; Indianapolis Star; Chicago Tribune; and the Mid-American Press Institute.

Registration: Cost is $75 for the workshop and food service. Registration available at this link.

Accommodations: Discount hotel rates are available until Sunday, April 7, for workshop participants at the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel. The rate is $89 per night. For reservations, call 217 544-8800 or 1-866-788-1860 and ask for the NewsTrain or APME rate.

Diversity Scholarships Available: The Associated Press Media Editors Foundation will offer diversity scholarships to APME NewsTrain events in 2013 for print and broadcast journalists and students who are pursuing careers in journalism. CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE.

Special Event: In conjunction with the 10th anniversary year of NewsTrain, those attending the workshop are invited to a free reception and performance of Freedom Sings, a musical program from the First Amendment Center, on the evening of April 29. The event will be held at the Old State Capitol and is sponsored by the Associated Press Media Editors Foundation, the Illinois Press Association & Foundation, and the Old State Capitol Foundation.

2013 APME Journalism Excellence Awards – Deadline May 15

APME is now accepting entries for its 2013 APME Journalism Excellence Awards, which honor superior journalism and innovation among newspapers, radio, television and online news sites across the United States and Canada. The awards seek to promote excellence by recognizing work that is well-written and incisively reported.

There are four changes this year: The Digitial Storytelling category is taking a more feature approach to multimedia storytelling. The Public Service Award now carries a $1,500 prize for the Overall Winner of the three divisions, as awarded by the APME Foundation. There are also more clear definitions in the Innovator of the Year categories. And the First Amendment Awards offers a $1,000 prize for the overall winner in the Sweepstakes Award, now named the Tom Curley Sweepstakes Award in honor of the retired president of The Associated Press who championed these rights. The award is sponsored by the APME Foundation.

Four of the categories offer monetary awards: the Seventh Annual Innovator of the Year Award for newspapers, the Public Service Awards, the Fourth Annual Gannett Foundation Award for Innovation in Watchdog Journalism and the First Amendment Awards.

All awards are presented for journalism published or launched between May 1, 2012, and April 30, 2013.

The deadline for entries is May 15, 2013

The entry fees are $75 per entry for APME members and $100 per entry for non-members.

The awards will be presented at the APME annual conference Oct. 28-30 in Indianapolis, and are linked on the APME website. The finalists of the newspaper Innovator of the Year will present at the conference, and the winner will be selected by conference attendees.

The APME Online Auction is Open! Bid today!

The Associated Press Managing Editors' online auction is back with exciting, fun and helpful items to help APME in its mission to train and support newsroom leaders through training, the annual conference, awards, webinars and myriad other practical tools.

APME is offering an early bird registration discounted price through May 1: $195 for members; $295 for non-members. After May 1, the registration cost will revert to $250 for members; $350 for non-members.

For the first time and in recognition of its 80th anniversary in 2013, APME is offering lifetime memberships for a limited time. You can join this elite group of news industry leaders for just $800 -- already, four members have made this commitment to APME. Renew your membership for a year or a lifetime by clicking here.

APME Sounding Board on Health Care Coverage

By the APME Sounding Board committee

When it comes to Associated Press coverage of the new health care reform law, editors are most interested in stories detailing the nuts-and-bolts of how the new law will work and what it will mean for individuals and families.

A survey of 65 editors showed a big appetite for explanatory coverage of the Obama Admistration’s landmark health reform law. Previous AP stories about the law and ongoing revisions were used by 95 percent of the news organizations represented in the survey.

More than 80 percent of those surveyed were seeking stories that explains how the provisions of the law, such as creation of insurance exchanges or mandatory coverage requirements, will affect individuals and their families , as well as how it will impact employers.

"People are desperate about what this means to them and how much it will cost,” wrote one editor.

Commented another editor, "We need a heads up on what details we should be examining.”

"For instance, how does the law define preventive care? Or is that an angle that even matters under this law? A lot of health plans now cover preventive care for things like a mammogram every year or a colonoscopy every five years. Will that change? Will the cost of an emergency or urgent-care visit change? How much do they cost in Washington vs. Alabama? "

Q-and-A’s were a particularly useful and valuable format for presenting the complexities of the new law, according to 83 percent of the editors surveyed. Nearly two-thirds of the editors were also interested in cost comparisons among states and localities.

By contrast, less than 40 percent of those surveyed were interested in AP providing broad takeouts or narratives about the law itself. And less than 30 percent wanted personal or anecdotal stories from AP about how health care reform is faring.

What editors want from coverage is clarity about the details.

More than half of the respondents were interested in partnering with AP on coverage of health care reform. Most editors wanted several days notice of upcoming major AP packages on health care reform: 41 percent wanted at least five days notice, 35 percent wanted three days.

About two-thirds of the respondents would be interested in partnering with AP on health care reform coverage.

When it comes to AP localizing health reform coverage for members, editors mentioned a variety of approaches including access to databases, comparisons of how different states are handling exchanges, stories on the impact on rural hospitals and a look at how state legislatures are responding to the new law.

The desire for more coverage was nearly universal. One editor commented that the impact of the law is so far reaching and touches so many issues – politics, technology, soaring health care costs, the Baby Boomer bubble -- that AP "…really can’t overcover.”

(Editors interested in partnering with AP on health care topics, should contact Kristin Gazlay, AP managing Editor for state news, business news and global training at kgazlay@ap.org)

Staff reporter Lanz Banes leads the Vallejo Times Herald staff in an effort to capitalize on a popular digital photo-capturing trend: 30 photos in 30 days. In this contest, Lanz and the VTH crew designed a calendar filled with daily challenges asking readers to snap pictures of local landmarks, events, activities, etc. Submissions are posted the next day in a photo slideshow; editors chose winners for the August 30/30 contest at the end of the month.

The tip came from Jordan, the confirmation from Washington, and the result was not one but two important beats on U.S. support for rebels in the Syrian civil war.

It started when Jamal Halaby, the AP’s chief correspondent in Amman, was told by a highly placed official that the U.S., working in the Jordanian desert, had for months been secretly training secular ex-servicemen from the Syrian army.

The operation, which also involved Britain, France and other Western allies, focused on Sunni Bedouin tribesmen who could fill a security vacuum (and provide a counterweight to militant Jihadists) if Syrian President Bashar Assad is ousted. The ex-servicemen were going back to Syria to train others, and that group, not the rebel Free Syrian Army, was the recipient of arms and weapons financed and shipped by U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The shutdown of what authorities said was a $600 million Ponzi scheme run out of recession-weary Lexington, N.C., had been a big story in North Carolina and earned prominent play around the country. But no one had ever shown readers the extent of the scheme or delved into the investigation that led to its closure by regulators – that is, until Charlotte reporter Mitch Weiss took ownership of the story.

Weiss spent months sifting through documents from federal and state sources, company emails and consumer complaints, and also conducted dozens of interviews, enabling him to piece together the inside story of ZeekRewards, a website that had offered a share of its sister company’s penny auction's profits to people who invested money, promoted the company on other websites and recruited other participants. In reality, authorities say, the investment plan ripped off thousands of people struggling to make ends meet in a town brought low by the bottoming-out of the furniture and textile industries. He also was able to reveal that regulators had been receiving complaints for months that ZeekRewards was a Ponzi scheme, but still allowed people to invest in it.

ABOUT US: APME Update is published regularly by the Associated Press Media Editors Association. APME Update is edited by Sally Jacobsen. Send submissions by e-mail or call Sally at (212) 621-7007.

To receive APME Update by e-mail notify apme@ap.org. APME is an AP-member group of newspaper, broadcast and college education leaders founded in 1933 to provide input on the services of The Associated Press and to help newsroom managers become better leaders. A business league under section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code, APME is funded through registrations and sponsorships at the annual conference, APME Supporting Memberships and in-kind support. The Associated Press Media Editors Association Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, supports educational programming. Membership in APME is open to senior print and online editors at AP-member newspapers and news directors, news managers or other senior positions at AP broadcast outlets in the United States and Canadian Press publications in Canada. It is also open to administrators, professors, instructors, leaders or advisers of journalism studies programs at recognized colleges and universities and to editors or leaders at newspapers, radio stations, websites or other news outlets at recognized universities and colleges.